Chuck Berry: one of the only musicians with a genuine claim to be the founder of a genre

When time travel adventure Back to the Future included the conceit of the white 1980s teenager, Marty McFly, inventing rock ‘n’ roll, there was really only one song to hang it on – Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”. Legendary is an overused adjective in popular culture, but Berry’s passing is a salutary reminder of what a giant in the field actually looked like.